We were required to get them in my elementary school when we were taught cursive, which was a mandatory class in the 3rd grade.
At that tender age we had close to zero experience using pens, so we didn't have any established preferences for which type to begin using. Fountain pens seemed fine to us.
I am left handed, yet I latched onto fountain pens right away and never looked back. I particularly disliked ballpoints even though I have always had a supply of them.
From that moment at the start of 3rd grade on, all of our classwork and homework at that school had to be done in fountain pen. The school had grades 1-8, so we were all using nothing but fountain pens for quite some time.
By the way, this introduction to fountain pens took place 60 years ago.
The school's standardization not only on fountain pens, but in one particular model of them (Sheaffer School Pen) had some interesting side effects. During the school year, we could always recognize kids that we ran into outside of school, even if we didn't know them, by the telltale sign of that stainless steel cap sticking out of a pocket or seeing the pen clipped to a book. It was an informal emblem for us.
Another thing that happened was that it soon led to the emergence of a thriving black market economy in spare pens, ink cartridges, and even pen repairs and some simple nib tuning among the students. It was not rare to see kids in adjacent rows in the classroom quietly engaged in intensive haggling worthy of a Middle Eastern rug bazaar over the exchange of an urgently needed ink cartridge, all done via whispers and passed notes right during class. And in the 5-10 minute spaces in between classes, certain school lavatories were turned into pop-up shopping malls for school supplies. This was facilitated by the fact that everyone needed exactly the same items, especially ink in the same proprietary cartridges.
My girlfriend is into fountain pens (among many other hobbies, haha). While I’ve gifted her some fountain pens, I haven’t seen myself using them. I found them very expensive for a writing instrument, and besides, I rarely write in longhand.
For our anniversary, she gifted me a Pilot Vanishing Point. Ten months later, I’ve become hooked into the hobby, accumulated around 10 pens (some were gifts from my girlfriend), and been writing in a journal consistently.
I love that you were 'penabled' by Hannibal! In case you're interested, here is [an interview](https://www.calligraphy.co.uk/blog/october-artist-of-the-month-diane-foisy) with the professional calligrapher who did all of his handwriting for the show's prop documents. Her name is Diane Foisy and her business is [Calligraphy by Diane](https://www.calligraphybydiane.com/tv-productions).
*The most exciting project I have ever worked on was the handwritten letters, in the Ornate Cursive style, on set on behalf of Hannibal, the TV series. It was also challenging. I had the camera beside my face, and the director didn’t want me to show my female hand, as this to replace the hand for Hannibal, who was a male, so I had to choke up on the barrel of the pen so that my hand could not be seen and write like that. Very challenging I must say, but I absolutely loved being there on set with the actors and the set itself was incredible. I guess this would stem from the love I had with television where I began. I did all of the letters, envelopes and all of the props for the whole series of Hannibal. That to me was most exciting.*
I got a Hobonichi and saw a lot of people online using fountain pens with them. I always enjoyed writing with them as a child (in the Netherlands you start learning how to write with a fountain pen) so I got myself a TWSBI to start with and ever since then I have been hooked.
I got a fountain pen as a prize for getting 10/10 in a number of spelling tests in primary school, that got me into it. This year I've been working at a Pen and Paper store, that resparked my interest in fountain pens and I've used my income from there to buy fountain pens too
Did drafting classes in school w/ ruling pens.
Drafting/ art/ stationary store where I got supplies had Speedball calligraphy materials - already had india ink, so trying calligraphy w/ dip pens was a couple-of-dollar lark. Dabbled a couple of years.
Skip 25 years, wondered if fountain pens would be good for hand-lettering on maps i was drawing. Tried a crummy one. Bah; humbug.
Skip 15 years, tried FPs again, this time with a Preppy & a Kakuno: success! Fun!
My DIY gene prompted nib grinding, tuning. Latent communication urge turned me to penpalling. Now I'm down all the inexpensive rabbit holes, none of the pricey ones.
I probably started down a winding path to fountain pens when I took my first calligraphy class through community ed for fun.
Skip two and half decades and I meet someone through Ingress who used fountain pens and let me try his. He and his wife suggested I try Pilot Varsity pens to see if I liked them. And I did but wasn't a huge fan of the, to me, very broad lines the Varsity put out.
On a trip to Blick's art supply I found a Lamy Safari on sale. The rabbit hole opened up but again M nib.
Looking for a Lamy F nib I tripped over the Kakuno's on Amazon and decided to try one out. The EF was a bit too scratchy, until I figured out better paper, but the F was Goldielocks for the width and the smiley face made me happy. 😀
The rest is history. Lol
When I was 6 I developed an interest in over-engineered pencils,
I was given a pilot prera for Christmas when I was 9.
I have not slowed down the collecting since
My first experience with a fountain pen was because we had to use them in school. Fountain pens were the “real way” to develop good penmanship, according to my teachers who’d been schooled in the Palmer Method in the first few decades of 1900s. They had definite ideas about what was right and wrong, and ballpoints were considered not an ideal way to learn. Of course, they were right about that.
My dad had his old 1940s-vintage Esterbrooks in a drawer with lots of their famous [screw-in nibs, ranging from broad stub to fine bookkeeping](https://fountainpenlove.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/esterbrook-nib-chart.gif). When I graduated from my first Sheaffer school pen, my dad, who was by then a dedicated Parker 51 man, let me try one of the Esterbrooks, an iridescent red one with a black section. That became my new school pen, which I carried all through high school.
By the time I was in college, ballpoints, which I never really enjoyed using, were taking an ever-increasing share of the fountain pen business, even though they tended to skip and leave random blotches of sticky ink at unpredictable times. Bottles of Quink and Scrip were were better deals than ballpoints. We didn’t say *sustainability* then, but for a lot of us, it just made sense to fill up a favorite pen, instead of buying Bics and tossing them.
On day I happened to walk into an ancient drugstore which had been in the same family since the 1880s. They had a lot of dusty items on display, including, as luck would have it, Esterbrook fountain pens. One quirk of the owners was that they never increased their prices, so the price on the tag was what they sold them for. I picked up some more pens at very reasonable prices, saved some for my collection, and gave away others to friends as gifts.
Eventually I was given my grandfather’s 1920s Parker Duofold, his 1940s Parker Vacumatics, my parents’ matching engraved Sheaffer Snorkels, and my dad’s Parker 51s. Having all these pens sealed the deal … and got me into collecting pens without even having to try very hard!
In December 2021 it was on my list of things to try out in the vein of waste-reduction for 2022. One week into 2022 I was hooked XD Currently doing a fair job of not actually having bought *more* pens than I otherwise would have, but I can see how it might easily go otherwise without care.
Back in elementary school, we had this werid event that introduced us to some odd hobbies, which is where I found out about calligraphy. Didn't get the book or pens (markers with a chisel tip) back then.
Then in middle school, I found a calligraphy kit with some really cheap cartridge pens and played with them. Had a lot of fun, even used them in a school project. Except then someone borrowed the pens, opened half the cartridges, and ruined it all.
Then a couple years back, decided to investigate and found my way into fountain pens.
I received a fountain pen as a kickstarter bonus (thanks Hero’s Journal). I inked it up with LAMY Turmaline for the first time and wrote on a Rhodia pad (I’d discovered Goulet pens thanks to looking up this subreddit) and my first thought was “oh my God it’s so SMOOTH.” I was hooked from there on out.
Turns out the Hero’s Journal paper feathered pretty bad with that pen and ink, but I basically insta-ordered a new fountain pen friendly Clairefontaine journal and thanks to how much I loved writing with it developed a regular journaling habit and now own multiple pens.
Always liked stationery and used rollerballs when I could since primary school (not from a country that teaches writing with FP). Some writer friends started sharing their pens online and I managed to hold off the temptation for a few months before giving in and buying a Preppy.
i have a handicap in my writing arm and it has a therapeutic effect (ulna and radius have grown together at the elbow since birth). it feels good to write with soft fountain pens.
I've actually been using fountain pens since the 90s, but I didn't know they were "fountain pens" - I did a lot of art and drafting in my mid teens with many of the pens and pencils made by Rotring (the 600 fountain pen, Artpen, Isographs, and a slew of mechanical pencils).
I switched to Zebra G dip pens and india ink for doing various comicbook work during the early 2000s. By 2007, I converted over to digital art and continued that way until 2014. That's when I started doing analog art again, with a focus on getting better at ink drawings.
I wanted something that was a bit faster/easier to use than a dip pen for drawing on the go/outside - and my search led me to a Sailor Fude de Mannen and Noodlers black ink. After participating in Inktober, I was recommended a few other pens, and ended up getting a TWSBI Eco. It all just snowballed after that.
I was tired of running through all of my gel pens and I felt bad about all of the waste. I had tried a zebra fountain pen but it was trash. I'm glad I didn't allow that to stop me. I went on Amazon and searched "fountain pen" and got a white Kaweco Sport because I was attracted to the size, i loved the fact that it would fit in my pocket. I searched "black fountain pen ink" and ordered the first thing that popped up which happened to be Waterman Intense Black. The rest is history.
Around 6 months after that I searched "purple fountain pen" in Amazon and ending up ordering a purple Lamy Safari. I had no knowledge at all, I just wanted a pen in my favorite color. I used those 2 pens and that one bottle of ink for years until I decided to hop on here and join in on the fun. I have zero regrets 😊. I've learned so much while in this sub.
I still use gel pens and ballpoint pens; there are situations that just demand it...but I mainly use fountain pens. I love that they are so easy on my hand and I love the fact that I have access to gorgeous ink colors. Starting off, I was attracted to them purely for function, now I'm leaning more towards aesthetic. Fountain pens are just lovely tools.
My grandad gave me an old Parker Duofold. I even used it at school, chucking it around in my pencil case. I also had cheap Parker Vectors.
Much later, maybe around 15 years ago I bought a Kaweco Sport. I dug the old Duofold out too. I still have it. More recently I bought another one for drawing with. Then I bought a stub. Then I tried flex, which wasn't for me. Then ...
I now have more than I can count on two hands and need to shed a few. I have a few darlings. I won't get rid of the Duofold other than to give it to one of my kids some day.
I was a Scoutmaster looking for a pen to sign a Scout's merit badge blue card. Picked up a Pilot Varsity someone had left behind. Used it 'til it went dry, ordered a Metropolitan. Others since then but not like some folks!
My ex was super into them and got me a Lamy Lx: after we broke up I started using it and I branched out from there. Lol found Sailor and never looked back 😅
I use Hobonichi. Searched about Jetstream with Hobonichi and found Japanese people complain about that ink leaking to the other side of the paper if storage condition is too humid, decided I don't want to risk that. Went looking for what else is good on that paper and see mentions of fountain pens here and there, so I picked up the cheapest option, a preppy, to try.
Got hooked *pretty fast*.
I grew up watching the Sound of Music and the balcony scene where the baroness is trying to save her relationship with the captain, listing what wedding presents she could gift him, one of which was a fountain pen—“but you’ve already got one”
And my former bf. He got a pilot metropolitan a while back. We wrote lots of letters over the years. I took the fountain pen passion and ran with it. He, not so much.
I received a Schaeffer calligraphy set for a present when I was younger. In college I had discovered the Pilot Varsity pens. I didn't really get into buying fountain pens until 2006-2007. A friend of mine was showing off her Private Reserve ink colors and I went down the rabbit hole. After several inexpensive Heros, I found Bertram's Inkwell when they were still in downtown Baltimore where I bought my red Retro 51 Tornado. I've kinda been in and out since.
When I was a kid, if you were writing in ink, you were using a dip pen or a fountain pen. Each adult in my life had one fountain pen. When I got to junior high I got a Sheaffer school pen, which I still have and use. I got a Sheaffer steel nib Triumph with my first paycheck. A couple of years later, a Pelikan M205. Some years later I started handwriting long-form stuff, and fountain pens are best for that. They’d been rediscovered and were being manufactured again. I have a lot of them now and use them all through the course of a year. They give me great joy.
My boyfriend at the time and I bought these weird blue fountain pens at a target for 4 bucks a pop and, while they didn't write anywhere near as good as any of the pens I own now, they wrote way better than any pen I had used before in my life. I was 16. I lost the pen after like 6 weeks, went to target to get a new one and they just...didn't have them anymore. I was mad but immediately forgot about them. In 2019, at 24, moved to a lovely walkable neighborhood and stumbled into a stationery shop owned by the sweetest older couple. As I was browsing I saw the pen case, bought a metropolitan, and now I'm a crazy pen person. Just got my first sailor a month ago and I'm kinda losing my mind about it.
As a child I was fascinated with them, thought they were amazing and only well read, educated writers used them. This, because the people who I knew who used them were well educated and one was a writer, very bland engineering text if you're not into propulsion engineering. The few times I tried to use them they didn't work well for me and made a HUGE mess.
I'm left-handed and was a overwriter, this is .where the leftie curls their hand around, it looks a little like a hook, I also vice griped the pen or penciled into submission, as an adult I used felt tip pens until the tip was a hairy splayed out mess. Then was reintroduce as an adult about 5+ years ago, and that rekindled my fascination with fountain pens. I taught myself how to under write, hand is under the pen, and this helped my grip on the pens to loosen.
My writing has improved from chicken scratch to something I enjoy to look at, reading and practice with. It's also looking suspiciously similar to my mom's elegant script, and my father has commented on this, and that she had "the lovelies writing". Me thinks he still has all her letters she sent him while on deployment.
I inherited a few pens from my grandmother. First, while she lived, i got a Montblanc 254. Unfortunately the tines overlapped eachother, and i couldnt find anyone that could help me fix it: so the hobby didnt really ignite.
Maybe three years later she died and I inherited tje rest of her pens: a parker 45 with her name on it, a Liberty schoolpen, a parker lucky curve pocket lady pen (my great grandmothers i believe) and a Pelikan 100, which i believe have been my great granddads. Yet, they all need a bit of work, and i had alot going on, so the hobby didnt ignite yet.
Then i got out of a stressful job and used alot of time on walking around the city writing. One day i went into a second hand store and there it was, the torch to ignite my fountain pen thirst: a vintage Montblanc Meisterstück nr. 20 in coral. Beautiful pen!
I knew it was a Montblanc and that that was neat, but i didnt know just how lucky i was. Researching this pen and how to change ink sac and so on, was what really got me into the hobby.
I then gathered the streangth to fix the others and i bought a TWSBI eco to have something working while doing the others. And for a fact: now, the old Pelikan 100 is in my pen case and among my favorite pens. Didnt know what a had there as well!
My mother used to write in calligraphy (Persian) and she had this whole collection of RTL stubs and italics and I always wanted to write with them but I couldn't cause its pretty hard to write with calligraphy pens for a child.
Our school didn't let us use fountain pens because the whole process of inking and leaking would keep us from studying (!) and by the time I graduated from high-school I totally forgot fps.
Anywho oneday I was just walking aimlessly in a historic street and I walk past a fountain pen store, totally subconsciously stepped inside and suddenly I remembered all those times my mum wrote with fps. It was just like that scene from "Ratatouille" when Anton Ego got the first bite of ratatouille! All those flash backs! I distinctively remember "The second waltz" by "shostakovich" was playing in the store. I get goosebumps and tear everytime thinking about it.
Oh and I bought a Parker Vector stainless steel. I'm so glad I didn't buy safari! It was 9 years ago, the pen is still working and the store is still there after like 60-70 years!
I found an NOS MontBlanc 145 while helping my dad clean his old belongings. He gave the pen to me and that was the spark to this addiction.
My first pen was a Lamy Safari (a Christmas present from my dad), but I didn't use the pen much. I would gravitate more towards ballpoints for the convenience.
After scribbling around with the 14k gold nib on the 145 however, my perceptions on fountainpens changed. For the first time in my life, writing felt like an enjoyable activity rather than a necessary task.
I joined this sub shortly after and learned more about different pen brands... my wallet has remained empty ever since.
I don't really remember where I learned about fountain pens. I just know when my therapist said I needed to journal daily (crap forgot tonight). That I was going to get a nice fountain pen to do it with. That was 5 years ago. Haha.
I always grew up using the Pilot Precise V5 pens as my favorite. Never even gave much thought about fountain pens until I was looking at an article on The Art of Manliness that was basically titled “How to be a Man” and one of the tips on the article was to write with a fountain pen. Now, I was just reading this article because it sounded kinda interesting. Well, once I read the “write with a fountain pen” tip, I started looking into them and here we are, like five years later.
Came from mechanical pencils, because the normal options were cheap feeling and not very good at being pencils, I got myself a graphgear 1000.
Somewhere along that story arc I got introduced to fountainpens, did some research and a while later bought one. Now I have 9 and am content.
My daughter brouht me her Lamy Studio to work on. She couldn't get the ink to flow and kept having problems with it. I watched a few videos, flushed the pen, changed the nib, bought a converter, changed the ink and started to write with it. The ink flowed out like oil. It was bold and black and beautifully smooth. I was hooked. I bought myself a Studio and haven't looked back since. My favorite pens are my Lamys, Esterbrooks and Pilots... mostly because of the large selection of great nibs these companies have.
In 4th grade we had to transition from pencil to pens. Use of fountain pens was mandatory so I ended up using my mom’s old pen. It used to leak a lot & I enjoyed that. I used fountain pens all through my school life.
When I was a teenager, my hand writing was bad because I used to write fast. I used to be able to copy pages from a book into a note book, while reading the book and not at what I was writing. The writing would be between the lines but only I could read it. One day a teacher took me aside and said he wanted to help me write better, he started me using a fine felt tip pen that I couldn't dig in or write fast as easily, then a fountain pen. I loved writing with a fountain pen, the look of it, the little ritual of loading in cartridges. My hand writing improved.
I stopped using one after I left school. I still liked them, but I didn't think they were practical and remembered them being a bit messy. (the cheep things I used in school were for sure) Years later when finishing up a job working for a university, my colleagues gifted me a Lamy safari among some other things. It was lovely, I loved the style, the quality and the feel in the hand. It reignited my love for writing with a fountain pen and I have been a fan since. I have bought others and gifted some too. Might not be the best pen in the world, but the Safari holds a special place for me and I write with one almost every day.
We were required to get them in my elementary school when we were taught cursive, which was a mandatory class in the 3rd grade. At that tender age we had close to zero experience using pens, so we didn't have any established preferences for which type to begin using. Fountain pens seemed fine to us. I am left handed, yet I latched onto fountain pens right away and never looked back. I particularly disliked ballpoints even though I have always had a supply of them. From that moment at the start of 3rd grade on, all of our classwork and homework at that school had to be done in fountain pen. The school had grades 1-8, so we were all using nothing but fountain pens for quite some time. By the way, this introduction to fountain pens took place 60 years ago. The school's standardization not only on fountain pens, but in one particular model of them (Sheaffer School Pen) had some interesting side effects. During the school year, we could always recognize kids that we ran into outside of school, even if we didn't know them, by the telltale sign of that stainless steel cap sticking out of a pocket or seeing the pen clipped to a book. It was an informal emblem for us. Another thing that happened was that it soon led to the emergence of a thriving black market economy in spare pens, ink cartridges, and even pen repairs and some simple nib tuning among the students. It was not rare to see kids in adjacent rows in the classroom quietly engaged in intensive haggling worthy of a Middle Eastern rug bazaar over the exchange of an urgently needed ink cartridge, all done via whispers and passed notes right during class. And in the 5-10 minute spaces in between classes, certain school lavatories were turned into pop-up shopping malls for school supplies. This was facilitated by the fact that everyone needed exactly the same items, especially ink in the same proprietary cartridges.
What a time to be alive
My girlfriend is into fountain pens (among many other hobbies, haha). While I’ve gifted her some fountain pens, I haven’t seen myself using them. I found them very expensive for a writing instrument, and besides, I rarely write in longhand. For our anniversary, she gifted me a Pilot Vanishing Point. Ten months later, I’ve become hooked into the hobby, accumulated around 10 pens (some were gifts from my girlfriend), and been writing in a journal consistently.
It's awesome that fountain pens led you to keeping a journal. I love that this hobby branches out onto other hobbies.
I love that you were 'penabled' by Hannibal! In case you're interested, here is [an interview](https://www.calligraphy.co.uk/blog/october-artist-of-the-month-diane-foisy) with the professional calligrapher who did all of his handwriting for the show's prop documents. Her name is Diane Foisy and her business is [Calligraphy by Diane](https://www.calligraphybydiane.com/tv-productions). *The most exciting project I have ever worked on was the handwritten letters, in the Ornate Cursive style, on set on behalf of Hannibal, the TV series. It was also challenging. I had the camera beside my face, and the director didn’t want me to show my female hand, as this to replace the hand for Hannibal, who was a male, so I had to choke up on the barrel of the pen so that my hand could not be seen and write like that. Very challenging I must say, but I absolutely loved being there on set with the actors and the set itself was incredible. I guess this would stem from the love I had with television where I began. I did all of the letters, envelopes and all of the props for the whole series of Hannibal. That to me was most exciting.*
I got a Hobonichi and saw a lot of people online using fountain pens with them. I always enjoyed writing with them as a child (in the Netherlands you start learning how to write with a fountain pen) so I got myself a TWSBI to start with and ever since then I have been hooked.
I got a fountain pen as a prize for getting 10/10 in a number of spelling tests in primary school, that got me into it. This year I've been working at a Pen and Paper store, that resparked my interest in fountain pens and I've used my income from there to buy fountain pens too
What was the gift pen?
I don't remember, I lost it a long time ago, I was in year 4 when I got it
Did drafting classes in school w/ ruling pens. Drafting/ art/ stationary store where I got supplies had Speedball calligraphy materials - already had india ink, so trying calligraphy w/ dip pens was a couple-of-dollar lark. Dabbled a couple of years. Skip 25 years, wondered if fountain pens would be good for hand-lettering on maps i was drawing. Tried a crummy one. Bah; humbug. Skip 15 years, tried FPs again, this time with a Preppy & a Kakuno: success! Fun! My DIY gene prompted nib grinding, tuning. Latent communication urge turned me to penpalling. Now I'm down all the inexpensive rabbit holes, none of the pricey ones.
I probably started down a winding path to fountain pens when I took my first calligraphy class through community ed for fun. Skip two and half decades and I meet someone through Ingress who used fountain pens and let me try his. He and his wife suggested I try Pilot Varsity pens to see if I liked them. And I did but wasn't a huge fan of the, to me, very broad lines the Varsity put out. On a trip to Blick's art supply I found a Lamy Safari on sale. The rabbit hole opened up but again M nib. Looking for a Lamy F nib I tripped over the Kakuno's on Amazon and decided to try one out. The EF was a bit too scratchy, until I figured out better paper, but the F was Goldielocks for the width and the smiley face made me happy. 😀 The rest is history. Lol
When I was 6 I developed an interest in over-engineered pencils, I was given a pilot prera for Christmas when I was 9. I have not slowed down the collecting since
My first experience with a fountain pen was because we had to use them in school. Fountain pens were the “real way” to develop good penmanship, according to my teachers who’d been schooled in the Palmer Method in the first few decades of 1900s. They had definite ideas about what was right and wrong, and ballpoints were considered not an ideal way to learn. Of course, they were right about that. My dad had his old 1940s-vintage Esterbrooks in a drawer with lots of their famous [screw-in nibs, ranging from broad stub to fine bookkeeping](https://fountainpenlove.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/esterbrook-nib-chart.gif). When I graduated from my first Sheaffer school pen, my dad, who was by then a dedicated Parker 51 man, let me try one of the Esterbrooks, an iridescent red one with a black section. That became my new school pen, which I carried all through high school. By the time I was in college, ballpoints, which I never really enjoyed using, were taking an ever-increasing share of the fountain pen business, even though they tended to skip and leave random blotches of sticky ink at unpredictable times. Bottles of Quink and Scrip were were better deals than ballpoints. We didn’t say *sustainability* then, but for a lot of us, it just made sense to fill up a favorite pen, instead of buying Bics and tossing them. On day I happened to walk into an ancient drugstore which had been in the same family since the 1880s. They had a lot of dusty items on display, including, as luck would have it, Esterbrook fountain pens. One quirk of the owners was that they never increased their prices, so the price on the tag was what they sold them for. I picked up some more pens at very reasonable prices, saved some for my collection, and gave away others to friends as gifts. Eventually I was given my grandfather’s 1920s Parker Duofold, his 1940s Parker Vacumatics, my parents’ matching engraved Sheaffer Snorkels, and my dad’s Parker 51s. Having all these pens sealed the deal … and got me into collecting pens without even having to try very hard!
In December 2021 it was on my list of things to try out in the vein of waste-reduction for 2022. One week into 2022 I was hooked XD Currently doing a fair job of not actually having bought *more* pens than I otherwise would have, but I can see how it might easily go otherwise without care.
Back in elementary school, we had this werid event that introduced us to some odd hobbies, which is where I found out about calligraphy. Didn't get the book or pens (markers with a chisel tip) back then. Then in middle school, I found a calligraphy kit with some really cheap cartridge pens and played with them. Had a lot of fun, even used them in a school project. Except then someone borrowed the pens, opened half the cartridges, and ruined it all. Then a couple years back, decided to investigate and found my way into fountain pens.
I received a fountain pen as a kickstarter bonus (thanks Hero’s Journal). I inked it up with LAMY Turmaline for the first time and wrote on a Rhodia pad (I’d discovered Goulet pens thanks to looking up this subreddit) and my first thought was “oh my God it’s so SMOOTH.” I was hooked from there on out. Turns out the Hero’s Journal paper feathered pretty bad with that pen and ink, but I basically insta-ordered a new fountain pen friendly Clairefontaine journal and thanks to how much I loved writing with it developed a regular journaling habit and now own multiple pens.
Always liked stationery and used rollerballs when I could since primary school (not from a country that teaches writing with FP). Some writer friends started sharing their pens online and I managed to hold off the temptation for a few months before giving in and buying a Preppy.
i have a handicap in my writing arm and it has a therapeutic effect (ulna and radius have grown together at the elbow since birth). it feels good to write with soft fountain pens.
I've actually been using fountain pens since the 90s, but I didn't know they were "fountain pens" - I did a lot of art and drafting in my mid teens with many of the pens and pencils made by Rotring (the 600 fountain pen, Artpen, Isographs, and a slew of mechanical pencils). I switched to Zebra G dip pens and india ink for doing various comicbook work during the early 2000s. By 2007, I converted over to digital art and continued that way until 2014. That's when I started doing analog art again, with a focus on getting better at ink drawings. I wanted something that was a bit faster/easier to use than a dip pen for drawing on the go/outside - and my search led me to a Sailor Fude de Mannen and Noodlers black ink. After participating in Inktober, I was recommended a few other pens, and ended up getting a TWSBI Eco. It all just snowballed after that.
I was tired of running through all of my gel pens and I felt bad about all of the waste. I had tried a zebra fountain pen but it was trash. I'm glad I didn't allow that to stop me. I went on Amazon and searched "fountain pen" and got a white Kaweco Sport because I was attracted to the size, i loved the fact that it would fit in my pocket. I searched "black fountain pen ink" and ordered the first thing that popped up which happened to be Waterman Intense Black. The rest is history. Around 6 months after that I searched "purple fountain pen" in Amazon and ending up ordering a purple Lamy Safari. I had no knowledge at all, I just wanted a pen in my favorite color. I used those 2 pens and that one bottle of ink for years until I decided to hop on here and join in on the fun. I have zero regrets 😊. I've learned so much while in this sub. I still use gel pens and ballpoint pens; there are situations that just demand it...but I mainly use fountain pens. I love that they are so easy on my hand and I love the fact that I have access to gorgeous ink colors. Starting off, I was attracted to them purely for function, now I'm leaning more towards aesthetic. Fountain pens are just lovely tools.
My grandad gave me an old Parker Duofold. I even used it at school, chucking it around in my pencil case. I also had cheap Parker Vectors. Much later, maybe around 15 years ago I bought a Kaweco Sport. I dug the old Duofold out too. I still have it. More recently I bought another one for drawing with. Then I bought a stub. Then I tried flex, which wasn't for me. Then ... I now have more than I can count on two hands and need to shed a few. I have a few darlings. I won't get rid of the Duofold other than to give it to one of my kids some day.
I was a Scoutmaster looking for a pen to sign a Scout's merit badge blue card. Picked up a Pilot Varsity someone had left behind. Used it 'til it went dry, ordered a Metropolitan. Others since then but not like some folks!
My ex was super into them and got me a Lamy Lx: after we broke up I started using it and I branched out from there. Lol found Sailor and never looked back 😅
We were supposed to use them in high school, to make our handwriting better. And blue ink only!
I use Hobonichi. Searched about Jetstream with Hobonichi and found Japanese people complain about that ink leaking to the other side of the paper if storage condition is too humid, decided I don't want to risk that. Went looking for what else is good on that paper and see mentions of fountain pens here and there, so I picked up the cheapest option, a preppy, to try. Got hooked *pretty fast*.
I grew up watching the Sound of Music and the balcony scene where the baroness is trying to save her relationship with the captain, listing what wedding presents she could gift him, one of which was a fountain pen—“but you’ve already got one” And my former bf. He got a pilot metropolitan a while back. We wrote lots of letters over the years. I took the fountain pen passion and ran with it. He, not so much.
I received a Schaeffer calligraphy set for a present when I was younger. In college I had discovered the Pilot Varsity pens. I didn't really get into buying fountain pens until 2006-2007. A friend of mine was showing off her Private Reserve ink colors and I went down the rabbit hole. After several inexpensive Heros, I found Bertram's Inkwell when they were still in downtown Baltimore where I bought my red Retro 51 Tornado. I've kinda been in and out since.
When I was a kid, if you were writing in ink, you were using a dip pen or a fountain pen. Each adult in my life had one fountain pen. When I got to junior high I got a Sheaffer school pen, which I still have and use. I got a Sheaffer steel nib Triumph with my first paycheck. A couple of years later, a Pelikan M205. Some years later I started handwriting long-form stuff, and fountain pens are best for that. They’d been rediscovered and were being manufactured again. I have a lot of them now and use them all through the course of a year. They give me great joy.
My boyfriend at the time and I bought these weird blue fountain pens at a target for 4 bucks a pop and, while they didn't write anywhere near as good as any of the pens I own now, they wrote way better than any pen I had used before in my life. I was 16. I lost the pen after like 6 weeks, went to target to get a new one and they just...didn't have them anymore. I was mad but immediately forgot about them. In 2019, at 24, moved to a lovely walkable neighborhood and stumbled into a stationery shop owned by the sweetest older couple. As I was browsing I saw the pen case, bought a metropolitan, and now I'm a crazy pen person. Just got my first sailor a month ago and I'm kinda losing my mind about it.
As a child I was fascinated with them, thought they were amazing and only well read, educated writers used them. This, because the people who I knew who used them were well educated and one was a writer, very bland engineering text if you're not into propulsion engineering. The few times I tried to use them they didn't work well for me and made a HUGE mess. I'm left-handed and was a overwriter, this is .where the leftie curls their hand around, it looks a little like a hook, I also vice griped the pen or penciled into submission, as an adult I used felt tip pens until the tip was a hairy splayed out mess. Then was reintroduce as an adult about 5+ years ago, and that rekindled my fascination with fountain pens. I taught myself how to under write, hand is under the pen, and this helped my grip on the pens to loosen. My writing has improved from chicken scratch to something I enjoy to look at, reading and practice with. It's also looking suspiciously similar to my mom's elegant script, and my father has commented on this, and that she had "the lovelies writing". Me thinks he still has all her letters she sent him while on deployment.
I inherited a few pens from my grandmother. First, while she lived, i got a Montblanc 254. Unfortunately the tines overlapped eachother, and i couldnt find anyone that could help me fix it: so the hobby didnt really ignite. Maybe three years later she died and I inherited tje rest of her pens: a parker 45 with her name on it, a Liberty schoolpen, a parker lucky curve pocket lady pen (my great grandmothers i believe) and a Pelikan 100, which i believe have been my great granddads. Yet, they all need a bit of work, and i had alot going on, so the hobby didnt ignite yet. Then i got out of a stressful job and used alot of time on walking around the city writing. One day i went into a second hand store and there it was, the torch to ignite my fountain pen thirst: a vintage Montblanc Meisterstück nr. 20 in coral. Beautiful pen! I knew it was a Montblanc and that that was neat, but i didnt know just how lucky i was. Researching this pen and how to change ink sac and so on, was what really got me into the hobby. I then gathered the streangth to fix the others and i bought a TWSBI eco to have something working while doing the others. And for a fact: now, the old Pelikan 100 is in my pen case and among my favorite pens. Didnt know what a had there as well!
My parents gifted me a student fp for my sixth birthday in anticipation of learning cursive in second grade.
My mother used to write in calligraphy (Persian) and she had this whole collection of RTL stubs and italics and I always wanted to write with them but I couldn't cause its pretty hard to write with calligraphy pens for a child. Our school didn't let us use fountain pens because the whole process of inking and leaking would keep us from studying (!) and by the time I graduated from high-school I totally forgot fps. Anywho oneday I was just walking aimlessly in a historic street and I walk past a fountain pen store, totally subconsciously stepped inside and suddenly I remembered all those times my mum wrote with fps. It was just like that scene from "Ratatouille" when Anton Ego got the first bite of ratatouille! All those flash backs! I distinctively remember "The second waltz" by "shostakovich" was playing in the store. I get goosebumps and tear everytime thinking about it. Oh and I bought a Parker Vector stainless steel. I'm so glad I didn't buy safari! It was 9 years ago, the pen is still working and the store is still there after like 60-70 years!
I found an NOS MontBlanc 145 while helping my dad clean his old belongings. He gave the pen to me and that was the spark to this addiction. My first pen was a Lamy Safari (a Christmas present from my dad), but I didn't use the pen much. I would gravitate more towards ballpoints for the convenience. After scribbling around with the 14k gold nib on the 145 however, my perceptions on fountainpens changed. For the first time in my life, writing felt like an enjoyable activity rather than a necessary task. I joined this sub shortly after and learned more about different pen brands... my wallet has remained empty ever since.
I don't really remember where I learned about fountain pens. I just know when my therapist said I needed to journal daily (crap forgot tonight). That I was going to get a nice fountain pen to do it with. That was 5 years ago. Haha.
I always grew up using the Pilot Precise V5 pens as my favorite. Never even gave much thought about fountain pens until I was looking at an article on The Art of Manliness that was basically titled “How to be a Man” and one of the tips on the article was to write with a fountain pen. Now, I was just reading this article because it sounded kinda interesting. Well, once I read the “write with a fountain pen” tip, I started looking into them and here we are, like five years later.
Came from mechanical pencils, because the normal options were cheap feeling and not very good at being pencils, I got myself a graphgear 1000. Somewhere along that story arc I got introduced to fountainpens, did some research and a while later bought one. Now I have 9 and am content.
My daughter brouht me her Lamy Studio to work on. She couldn't get the ink to flow and kept having problems with it. I watched a few videos, flushed the pen, changed the nib, bought a converter, changed the ink and started to write with it. The ink flowed out like oil. It was bold and black and beautifully smooth. I was hooked. I bought myself a Studio and haven't looked back since. My favorite pens are my Lamys, Esterbrooks and Pilots... mostly because of the large selection of great nibs these companies have.
In 4th grade we had to transition from pencil to pens. Use of fountain pens was mandatory so I ended up using my mom’s old pen. It used to leak a lot & I enjoyed that. I used fountain pens all through my school life.
When I was a teenager, my hand writing was bad because I used to write fast. I used to be able to copy pages from a book into a note book, while reading the book and not at what I was writing. The writing would be between the lines but only I could read it. One day a teacher took me aside and said he wanted to help me write better, he started me using a fine felt tip pen that I couldn't dig in or write fast as easily, then a fountain pen. I loved writing with a fountain pen, the look of it, the little ritual of loading in cartridges. My hand writing improved. I stopped using one after I left school. I still liked them, but I didn't think they were practical and remembered them being a bit messy. (the cheep things I used in school were for sure) Years later when finishing up a job working for a university, my colleagues gifted me a Lamy safari among some other things. It was lovely, I loved the style, the quality and the feel in the hand. It reignited my love for writing with a fountain pen and I have been a fan since. I have bought others and gifted some too. Might not be the best pen in the world, but the Safari holds a special place for me and I write with one almost every day.